Motorola Moto G6 Hands-on and First Impressions

Lenovo-owned Motorola has launched its new generation Moto Gs in India and we have the Moto G6 which is the successor to the last year’s Moto G5. The biggest difference you will see is the design that has completely changed the Moto G6 looks, while the rest like the processor, dual cameras, and all are incremental upgrades. Here’s our hands-on and first impressions with the Moto G6.

3D Glass Design & 18:9 Display

Motorola has shifted from metallic to glass design on the Moto G6, much like the Moto X4, but under-spec. All about the design is incredible, it’s strong, beautiful, and handy thanks to its tapered edges. The back is covered with a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 that has a 3D effect that glows when light falls on it.

It sports rather a bigger 5.7-inch display with the fancy 18:9 aspect ratio and Full HD+ resolution (2160 x 1080 pixels). Although the top and the bottom bezels are visible. Motorola has utilized the bottom space for the gesture-based Home button that doubles as a fingerprint scanner. The Home button looks tiny and may not be ergonomic as expected.

Talking about the performance, the Moto G6 is not the fastest phone in the segment, yet it’s an upgrade from the Snapdragon 430 found on its predecessor Moto G5. The Moto G6 is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 SoC consisting of eight cores clocked at 1.8 GHz max fueled by a 3,000 mAh battery with TurboCharging.

It comes in two variants either 3 GB or 4 GB with 32 GB or 64 GB internal storage. There’s an option to expand the storage via a microSD card on the separate slot, not on the SIM2 slot. The bottom has a type-C port instead of the old micro USB found on the previous generations.

Dual Cameras Onboard (12 MP + 5 MP)

For imaging, it offers dual cameras on the back, one 12 MP and another of 5 MP. As expected, the Moto G6 can take portraits with blurred background and a couple of tricks under its sleeves which includes the Spot color and Face filters. There’s an 16 MP shooter on the front side with LED flash for selfies.

The camera app seems to offer not much modes, that’s all you can see in the screenshot. We managed to take some shots in our first impressions, and here they are below.

Motorola Moto G6 Camera Samples

Depth Mode

Indoors

Low Light

Android Oreo

The Moto G6 is running on the stock interface Android 8.0 Oreo with features that you might have heard in the previous Motorola phones such as the Moto app additions that play an important role. There are a variety of gesture controls that can be handy like chop twice to turn on the flashlight, swipe navigation gestures, and more.

Early Verdict

For the price Motorola is asking for, it seems to be a little on the higher side if compared to the Chinese rivals like the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5. However, considering the design, the build quality, and the major changes in the design aesthetics from its predecessor, the Moto G6 could be a worthy contender at least for the way it looks.